“Two,” he bit out.
She flung the door open with a triumphant smile, getting exactly what she’d wanted. What she hadn’t expected to see was the SEAL standing before her in navy workout shorts that stopped just above his knees, and no shirt again. A sheen of sweat rolled over his muscles, and the slight chest hair across his pecs made him even hotter.
“So, looks like you’re the only naked one.”
“We need to work on your definition of naked again.” He brushed his hand through the air in her direction as he studied her clothed body.
“Were you working out?” She hadn’t meant to stare at his abs or the hard planes of his body . . . or the shoulders that were perfect for grabbing onto while making love.
God, this man didn’t make love, did he? No, his body was made for much naughtier things. No, he probably screwed women all the way to Oz and back.
“And this is why I shouldn’t have opened the door.”
“Say what?” He sat on the edge of her bed.
Did I say that aloud? Shit. “Nothing.” Her eyes widened when he lifted her laptop and held it before him. “Put that down!” She rushed toward him, snatching it from his grasp.
One dimple she hadn’t noticed before popped in his right cheek as his eyes caught hers. He’d never smiled big enough to expose his teeth before. “Are you writing a sex scene in that script?”
“You wish.” She closed the laptop and placed it on top of the dresser. “I didn’t mean—”
“Relax, Hollywood.”
“Maybe I would if you stopped calling me that.”
“Maybe you’d relax? Or maybe you’d write about sex?” He smiled again, and her heart danced.
He stood and tucked his hands in the pockets of his shorts. The material was that breathable kind of fabric, but it was also thin. She could make out the line of his very impressive package. She had a feeling if they exchanged any more banter he might just show off even more.
At this rate, her lip would become a permanent fixture between her teeth. “I never write sex scenes, by the way. My scripts always fade to black. If the director wants to be more creative, so be it, but I can’t write the vulgar details of such scenes.”
“Vulgar, huh?” His shoulders rounded back, which had his chest lifting. “You have a thing against sex?” He angled his head to the side, his blues traveling the length of her body, upward from her toes.
“I don’t like writing about it. Too many moving parts.” She flipped her wrists as if dismissing the idea.
“Maybe you haven’t had the best experience to draw from.”
One step.
He edged only one step closer to her, but that one step was so powerful, it had her bumping up against the dresser.
Predator. Prey.
Check. Check.
The look in his eyes made one thing perfectly clear: he wanted her. And maybe she’d only be a casual lay. Maybe that’s all the man was capable of—and maybe she should be offended by a man wanting her sexually while he’s supposed to protect her, but her body didn’t seem to give a shit. Her body craved the rough hands of this stranger running over every inch of her.
There’d only been one time in her life when white-hot lust had crept up on her, making her weak with the insatiable need to have sex.
Craig Louis. He’d been a childhood TV star who’d lured her into his trap of charm and sexiness, and she’d given him her virginity at seventeen. And Craig had dumped her as soon as he’d realized dating her wouldn’t land him a role in any of her father’s movies.
“My two questions,” she rushed out, deciding to protect her heart, even if her body didn’t want to listen. She wasn’t quite ready to live freely yet, especially with a man like this, a man who could clearly pulverize her heart with one crushing flick of his wrist when he dismissed her later. Not that he’d probably have a choice in the matter given his top-secret life. “I want my two questions.”
He heaved out a deep sigh and looked at the ground briefly. When his eyes found hers again, the smoldering look faded, and fast.
And why was that disappointing to her? She’d been the one to flip the switch.
“What do you want to know?”
She walked past him to the en-suite bathroom and grabbed a towel. “First, wipe that sweat from your body. It’s distracting.”
His lips curved when he caught the towel. He loved making her uncomfortable, didn’t he? Surely he could tell by looking at her she was fighting the impulse to squeeze her thighs together. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining how it’d feel to have him part her legs with his knee and press his mouth to her center.
“Hurry,” she cried, as he continued to slowly torture her by rubbing the towel across his tan body. Who the hell is still naturally tan in January—other than actors? And his tan was definitely a result of the sunshine. No way in hell this man cooked beneath fake rays.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
She’d prefer Hollywood to ma’am. “Ma’am is for teachers, mothers, and anyone over forty.”
“Really?” He clenched the towel tight between his palms. “Want me to grab a shirt, too, before I break government protocol and answer your two questions?”
“Like you’ll tell me anything too classified,” she snapped.
“‘Fuck classified,’ right?”
She spun in the other direction because it was the only way to steal her gaze away from the ripple of his flesh. “Sure,” she whispered, a chill snaking up her spine when she felt his breath meet the nape of her neck like it had last night at dinner.
He shifted the hair over her shoulder. His lips brushed against her earlobe, and the honest-to-God, only-happens-in-the-movies tingles swept from her neck down the curve of her back and to her ass.
“What are you doing?” she meekly asked and her eyes fell shut.
“Making you as uncomfortable as I am,” he whispered.
Didn’t he know she’d crossed that line basically the moment he told her she needed to hide in the woods or die?
Sexual tension was a blip on the radar compared to her life being threatened, wasn’t it?
But she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “I make you uncomfortable?”
Another warm breath kissed her skin, and this one had her breasts puckering to new life, getting overly optimistic that a touch after a long dry spell was imminent.
“You want me to talk about my job, and that makes me uneasy.”
“Oh,” she said, a whisper of disappointment softly echoing inside of her.
His hand curved over her shoulder. “Sure you don’t want to back down?”
She almost groaned, wishing they were merely in the midst of verbal foreplay and sexual innuendos. Life would be much easier if this moment was about a wild hookup, and she wasn’t in the woods with a SEAL who’d covered her body with his not even forty-eight hours ago to protect her from a barrage of bullets.
Bullets—it should’ve been bullshit. But, nope. This was reality. She’d crashed the biggest party of her life, and now she was paying the price.
“Should I go, or do you want to get this discussion over with?”
A coolness crept across her neck, and she realized he’d stepped back. “I thought about Googling the name Malik in relation to a consulate in New York,” she softly began while facing him, “but I didn’t know if I’d set off some sort of crazy bad-guy alarm in doing so.”
He visibly swallowed and let go of the towel. “I should shower.”
She reached for his wrist without thinking, her eyes widening. “Luke!”
He smirked, but glanced at her hand atop his arm. “Kidding.”
“Not really the best time for humor.”
He squinted and gave a half shrug. “I can’t seem to help myself around you.”
“Oh, yeah?” She let go of him. “And why is that?”
“You’re cute when you’re angry.”
“You already know so much about me, huh?” Her brow creased.
/> “I do have an entire dossier on your every movement since birth.” He stepped back and lowered himself to a seated position on the bed. “Thirty. Parents divorced at age seven, and you bounced back and forth between your mom’s place in New York and your dad’s in Malibu. You have two brothers and two sisters. Don’t get me started on the number of stepsiblings you have from your parents’ multiple marriages afterward.” He took a brief pause. “Perfect grades throughout school, except your junior year, when you dated that actor Craig . . . talk about a bad influence.”
Her mouth dropped open, but she couldn’t find the words.
“Graduated cum laude from USC in L.A., and did a double master’s after at Boston University. Went off the grid three years ago and reappeared as Eva Sharp.” He scratched at his short beard. “A natural brunette, but I’m guessing you’re rocking darker highlights right now for your disguise.” He paused for a moment, and his Adam’s apple moved in his throat. “And you have the most beautiful hazel eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Her heart took up residence in her throat. “That’s not fair. You can browse Wikipedia about me, and as for you—I don’t even know your last name.”
“Life isn’t fair. If it was, you wouldn’t be here with me right now. You’d be at your cabin writing your movie, living your lie of a life.”
“Don’t make it sound like that. Besides, who the hell are you to judge?”
He slowly rose, and she did her best to remain grounded as his eyes drilled into hers as if he were on the brink of stealing her every thought.
She couldn’t back down now. “Does anyone know the real you?” She poked his chest—his very naked chest. “It must make for a lonely life.”
“Clearly you know me, so . . .” He started to turn, but she flattened her hand against his flesh, and he remained before her.
“Don’t walk away from me. I want answers.” Confidence rushed through her raised voice.
The stubborn set of his jaw tightened; he eyed her hand as if it were a grenade. “It is lonely,” he rasped as if he hadn’t meant to admit that.
Guilt curled into a tight fist in her abdomen at the realization of how she’d talked to him—to a man who clearly put his life on the line for the country.
“You drive me nuts,” he said. “You’ve been making me crazy since I first saw you.”
“I—”
He gently gripped her chin and slanted his mouth over hers. He parted her lips with such an intense need it had her almost falling. But, of course, his hand swooped to the small of her back to keep her upright.
Her hands slipped between their bodies, and she guided them up his hard chest, groaning against his full mouth as he tugged at the strands of her hair, tipping her head further back so he could deepen the kiss.
She wasn’t sure who would break first, but in her gut, she knew it’d happen. One of them would blink, one of them would bow to desire, and the other would hold to the sense of responsibility.
And in three, two, one . . . Luke, the dedicated and responsible SEAL, tore his mouth from hers and released his grip as if she were a butterfly in his palms and he had to set her free.
Her hand swept to her mouth to cover her nearly swollen lips.
His eyes darkened to a different shade of blue, a color meant for midnight and stolen kisses in some secret garden. “Goodnight,” he said in his signature husky voice.
She was grateful he hadn’t apologized for the kiss. Brief as it was, it’d been exhilarating.
A rush of energy had exploded through her body the second his tongue had swept into her mouth, and everything inside her came to life: pop, sizzle, and spark.
She sure as hell knew it’d be a moment she’d never forget, and so, she went to her bed, opened her laptop, and decided to change her fade-to-black sex scene to one with a little more color.
Chapter Eleven
“Wow. You’re good.” She didn’t wait for an invite and brushed past him into his bedroom.
“You keep showing up after I take a shower.” He tightened the towel around his hips.
She whirled around and stabbed a finger in the air, a scowl marring her lips. “You tricked me. You distracted me with the kiss, so I’d forget about my questions.”
“That wasn’t my . . .” He allowed his voice to trail off as amusement pinned him still. With a lift of the chin, she edged closer as if she could intimidate. Good try, Hollywood.
“Is that a SEAL tactic?”
“Yeah, we go around making out with terrorists to get them to—” Did I just admit I was a SEAL? He cleared his throat and sidestepped her to go to the bathroom and get dressed. This wasn’t a conversation he planned on having wearing only a towel.
“You’re frustrating.” Her voice dangled along the fine line between exasperated and defeated.
He stopped outside the bathroom, and his arms swooped up. His palms landed on the exterior frame of the door. “I’m the frustrating one?” He peeked at her from over his shoulder, and she gave a hard nod.
Her eye contact was on point when he faced her again, but he could tell she wanted to lower her gaze, and it made his cock twitch.
“You’re the one who has been a thorn in my ass ever since you broke the deal and showed up at the cabin.”
“They’re my cabins!”
He stabbed a finger at his chest. “And I paid for them.”
“That’s semantics.” She waved a dismissive hand.
“Not really,” he grumbled before retreating to the bathroom.
“You’re not walking away from this conversation. I want my questions answered.”
“You can join me in here, but I plan on dropping this towel in a second to get dressed.” With his back to the vanity, he folded his arms.
“Go ahead,” she said, but heat stained her cheeks.
Oh, he would. Did she not realize that? But he also knew he’d have to give her mouth-to-mouth and resuscitate her after. Maybe that’d be a hardship he was willing to endure.
“No more deception. I want answers.”
He scoffed and crossed an ankle over his foot, and he could tell his casual stance further pissed her off. “I’m not deceiving you.”
“I need to know what I’m up against.” She dropped her eyes to the checkered tiles. “What partial code will these assholes try and torture out of me?”
“I won’t let them get to you.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Listen.” He took a breath, trying to steady his emotions. “It’s my job to keep civilians from knowing about all of the evil in the world. You’d never be able to sleep at night if you knew the news barely scratches the surface of the kind of shit I’ve seen . . . and stopped.”
“I’m not just anyone,” she said softly. “I’m in this with you now, whether I want to be or not.”
He stepped forward and placed a fist beneath her chin so his gaze could meet her eyes. “And this isn’t a story. You can’t write yourself out of it. This is real life, and real life is messy.”
“That’s not fair. Don’t try and make me out to be some naïve girl,” she whispered, her bottom lip trembling.
His jaw locked tight at her slip of emotion. “It’s hard for me to figure out whether you’re scared, and your walls are on the verge of crumbling, or if you really are strong enough to get through this.”
She kept her eyes on him, her lips tightening. Maybe she didn’t know either.
“What good will come from you knowing?” he asked when she kept quiet.
Her eyes became damp, and his arm dropped heavy at his side.
“If I have to die, I want to know why. I want to know what I’m dying for.”
He lightly gripped her shoulders. He’d never made this promise before, but he couldn’t get himself to say anything else. To believe anything else to be true. “You’re not going to die. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Please,” she murmured, the sound like the first prick of a tattoo needle—it p
ierced his flesh.
His stomach dropped knowing he was about to break protocol. He was the king of rules and regulations, a stickler for policy. His men fell in line behind him, so why was he going to be the first to let a civilian in on a mission? But she already knew so much at this point. Did it even matter? “Can I at least get clothes on first?”
She softly nodded and wiped at the tear on her cheek.
He took his time getting dressed in the bathroom once she’d left.
A million thoughts and objections raced through his mind like a derailed freight train—everything becoming jumbled in a sudden crash.
When he entered the room, he found her sitting on the bed, denim-clad legs stretched out in front of her. Her gaze slowly drifted his way.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“How about from the beginning,” she said, not skipping a beat.
“I’ll tell you what I can without too many specifics, but I can’t give you details about me. Okay?”
She nodded.
He tucked his hands beneath his armpits. “Five weeks ago, a man called the U.S. government and asked for protection.”
“He was in danger?”
“Yeah. He worked with criminals around the world if it paid well. He didn’t care about a cause, only financial gain.” His words were like a slap of betrayal toward his superiors for sharing the information and unease continued to fill him. “His name had been on Interpol’s list for years, but he never stayed in one place long, and because he was more of an intermediary between terror groups, it proved harder to catch him.”
“So, who’d he need protection from?”
“The guy had stockpiled intel on all of the groups he’d ever made deals with—his own insurance policy if shit ever got hairy.”
Her shoulders shrank forward. “But it backfired?”
“Someone,” he said while waving a hand in the air, “maybe even more than one organization discovered he’d been holding intel that could be damaging.”
“Why not just blackmail them like he planned?”
“You’re quick.” He shifted his weight to one leg and pressed a palm to one of the four bedposts. “He never got a chance to. He was shot but managed to escape, and that’s when he called the U.S. for help.”
Finding His Mark (Stealth Ops Book 1) Page 9
